Servers generate heat from the operation of electrical components, such as processors and hard drives. A temperature range, or rated temperature, is generally defined for each device or component.
Cooling systems within a server or computer may include one or more cooling fans. For example, a computer may have a processor fan, a motherboard fan, a power supply fan, and/or a video card fan. Cooling systems are designed to dissipate heat within the computer system, so that the individual components continue to run at or below their maximum allowable temperature.
Cooling systems often rely on temperature data from within the computer to control cooling fans or other cooling methods, such as water or air conditioned based cooling. One or more temperature sensors may be placed within a server or computer. The one or more temperature sensors may communicate temperature information to the cooling system controller. Temperature sensors are often available on computer motherboards and video cards. The most widely available temperature readings come from the chipset, the central processing unit (CPU), the ambient, or area surrounding the computer or server, and from the power circuitry. Modern CPUs can report their own internal temperature. Multi-core CPUs are often able to report temperatures from each single core. Self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology (S.M.A.R.T.) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability. Using S.M.A.R.T., hard disk temperature can be read.